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Poets Barbara Jane Reyes and Karen Llagas converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen.

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Barbara Jane Reyes, born in Manila and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, is an acclaimed Filipina American poet and author of several books, including Gravities of Center (2003), Diwata (2010), and Letters to a Young Brown Girl (2020), with Daughtersong Diaspore forthcoming in 2027. She has also published chapbooks and numerous poems and essays in major literary journals and outlets.
A recipient of awards such as the James Laughlin Award and a Mellon Foundation Fellowship, Reyes holds degrees from UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University. She teaches Philippine Studies at the University of San Francisco and lives in Oakland with her husband, poet Oscar Bermeo.

Karen Llagas’s new poetry collection, All of Us Are Cleaved, is recently published by Nomadic Press in 2023. Her first collection of poetry, Archipelago Dust, was published by Meritage Press in 2010. Other recent projects include translations of Filipino children’s books into English: Dancing Hands: A Story of Friendship in Filipino Sign Language (Chronicle Books, 2023) & How Do You Eat Color (Eerdman’s Book for Young Readers, 2025). A recipient of a RHINO Founder's Prize, Filamore Tabios, Sr. Memorial Poetry Prize & a Hedgebrook residency, her poems, translations, and book reviews have also appeared in various journals and anthologies, including most recently, Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (Paloma Press, 2023). She teaches Filipino at UC Berkeley and divides her time between San Francisco and Los Angeles. You can find more about her at www.karenllagas.com.

Evyn Le Espiritu Gandhi, Asian American Studies professor, and Cathy Linh Che, writer and multidisciplinary artist, converse with Viet Thanh Nguyen.

ABOUT THE GUESTS:
Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi is an associate professor of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (Tovaangar). Dr. Gandhi’s first book, Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine (University of California Press, 2022), was awarded the 2025 ACLS Open Access Book Prize in History. She is the co-editor with Vinh Nguyen of The Routledge Handbook of Refugee Narratives (Routledge, 2023). She is currently working on a second book project which revisits Gramsci’s “southern question” by constellating the southern spaces of South Korea, South Vietnam, and the US South during the Cold War and its afterlives.
Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), a Finalist for the National Book Award, Split (Alice James Books) and co-author of An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books). Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed, and her film We Were the Scenery was shortlisted for an Academy Award and won the Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction at the Sundance Film Festival. She teaches as Core Faculty in Poetry at the low residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Antioch University in Los Angeles and works as Executive Director at Kundiman. She lives in New York City.

Writer and illustrator Thi Bui and writer Vu Tran converse with hosts Viet Thanh Nguyen and Philip Nguyen.

ABOUT THE GUESTS
Thi Bui is a writer and artist from Việt Nam, California, and New York, now planting roots in New Orleans. Best known for her graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, which tells the story of her family amidst Việt Nam's struggles for independence, she has also been a longtime educator in public high schools, a professor of comics, a public speaker, an organizer and artist-activist, an ambivalent sculptor and puppeteer, a fledgling screenwriter, and an award-winning illustrator of children’s books and comics journalism.

Vu Tran is the author of Dragonfish, a NYT Notable Book, and a forthcoming novel, Your Origins. His writing has also appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best American Mystery Stories, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly, and McSweeney’s, among other publications. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and fellowships from the NEA, MacDowell, Yaddo, and Bread Loaf. Born in Saigon and raised in Oklahoma, Vu received his MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his PhD from the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas. He teaches English and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, where he is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts and director of undergraduate studies.

Filmmaker Bao Nguyen converses with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pullitzer prize-winning writer.

ABOUT THE GUEST
Bao Nguyen is an Emmy- and Grammy-nominated Vietnamese American filmmaker whose work explores memory and myth. His films have premiered at major festivals including Sundance, Cannes, and Telluride, and he directed Be Water, ESPN’s most-watched 30 for 30, and The Greatest Night in Pop, Netflix’s number one English-language film in its debut week and a multi-Emmy, Critics Choice, PGA, and Grammy nominee. His latest film, The Stringer (Sundance 2025), premiered on Netflix on November 28th. A partner at EAST Films and a Gold House A100 and BAFTA Breakthrough honoree, he recently joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Award-winning writer Ocean Vuong converses with Pulitzer Prize-winning host Viet Thanh Nguyen.

ABOUT THE GUEST
Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collections Night Sky with Exit Wounds and Time Is a Mother, as well as the New York Times bestselling novel On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship and the American Book Award, he used to work as a fast-food server, which inspired The Emperor of Gladness. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently splits his time between Northampton, Massachusetts, and New York City.